Power Metal. The Dungeons and Dragons of music.

CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO PILATE.

Anyway.

I've been listening to a bit of power metal lately. Y'know, the genre that sings about slaying down evil wizards and fighting dragons and forging swords and everything. And goddamn, does it feel good. I was just in a real mood to get back to those last few high school years of playing RPGs on my playstation, drawing dragons in notebooks and arguing about whether a cursed sword would be more useful in a medieval war than a blunt "normal" sword. I was one of those kids.

It got kinda kicked off when a friend linked me to a DragonForce video on youtube and I just rolled my eyes at their masturbatory licks when I stopped and started giggling. These guys are just too over the top. I got to listening, found some more of their stuff and stood around for a bit waggling my tongue and playing air guitar. Then I needed more. I got onto my metal friends.

Now, I've got Sonata Arctica, DragonForce, Rhapsody and Luca Turilli all in my playlist. I think I went a little overboard because power metal reaaaaally isn't good in big doses, but hey. I heartily recommend everybody make sure they've got access to it because I guarantee, one day you'll be sitting alone, you'll be looking at an oncoming storm cloud, you'll be fiddling around with a sketchbook and you'll, as if a lightning bolt had come from the clouds and slammed you in the face, realise that listening to some people wank lyrical on the upper end of a guitar fretboard is exactly what you need to hit that spot.


And no myspace band for today. I'm feeling pooped and cleaning the house for a stupid inspection by our stupid landlord.

So black the souls of my pain and grey slacks hath become.

Remember the mid 90s? God, what a fantastic time to be alive. Kurt Cobain wasn't treated as a jesus figure by a bunch of 12 year olds, Frente! were still touring, third wave ska had just started to hit music and Blink 182 were about to bring out their first album. Good times.

One thing I remember really well from back then - emo was way, way different. Emo back then is what hipsters were wearing about a year ago now. That look that has now rolled over to Coldplay/Radiohead fanfreaks. I'm talking black leather shoes, grey or dark olive slacks and white collared shirts being worn under blue sweaters. When thick black glasses weren't quite so, y'know, what they are now. And when hair was messy and in short almost spikes. Usually black or a sandy brown.

The music the emo culture connected with, too, sounded way different. Begone, Atreyu! So long, My Chemical Romance! A Simple Plan, you were too simple and have therefore been culled from the rest of this post! I'm talking bands like Sunny Day Real Estate. Bands like the band who I have just been listening to for about two hours, Mineral.

I really liked this era of emo music. It wasn't absurd almost to the point of parody like the stuff a bunch of bad comedians and popped-collar bigots love to make fun of. Hell, emo itself wasn't this object people choose to make fun of to show off how with it they are by mocking. Pick a harder target, morons. That joke sold out.

Mineral are just that kind of emo I dig. Voices that sound like the singer's just been crying and has regained his composure to get to the microphone. Subdued drums doing nifty fast-paced licks. Bass guitars being played high. Lots and lots of really mournful sounds. They're one of my favourite bands to sing along to while holding a can of deodorant like a microphone, grabbing my hair with my other hand and staring into mirrors like my reflection broke my heart. I, ah, like mirrors. My reflection could never break my heart. But I pretend. Oh yes, the pretending. That's why I'm an actor.

If you feel like flashing back to them good 'ol days, track down the album End Serenading and have some fun reliving how dark your pain feels. You may find yourself having some actual fun and actually getting moved.


Oh yeah, before I forget, Takako Minekawa is a fantastic electo pop funk sensation. I get some Get Smart vibes from some of her songs and I just wanna get the fuck down to a bunch of others. She makes some really sexy tunes and some really funky beats and it can't hurt you to pause your playlist for five minutes to go to her myspace and listen to one of her tracks. I promise you it'll be fun. Cat House will get you funking out in that space you have next to your computer reserved solely for dancin'. Maxi On will make you want to put on a gogo suit and seduce someone. Milk Rock is radical for chillin'. Go give your ears a listen. I implore! I request! I demand!!!

My god, it's full of Stars

Pretty snappy title, huh? I know I've done a small thing on them but damn if I don't find them too fantastic to leave a simple one-paragraph statement.

Stars are my current favourite band. They come straight out of Montreal, Canada and are headed straight for your *snicker* Heart. They're a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic shoegazey indie pop band that fans of Broken Social Scene, Architecture in Helsinki or The Mountain Goats will come to love, and I'll put money on that. Real money. The kind you use to buy beers.

They released their debut LP "Nightsongs" to a whole bunch of love from those that heard it. The album was incredibly sexy and set the score for Stars' whole vibe - death and heartbreak happen a lot, but that doesn't mean there isn't something adorably drawing hidden inside loss and sadness. It is my least-listened to of the three albums I have purely because I only just found it, but it's a good strong opener album. There's a few dud tracks but I haven't really found a general concensus on which tracks they are - I'll just say that This Charming Man and International Rock Star didn't really grab me, but I know folk who consider them the greatest on the album. You should listen to it yourself and make your own decision!

2003 gave us their album "Heart" which is just fantastic. It's more solid than Nightsongs and all of the songs feel thicker, with more going on. There's also a greater emphasis on the keyboard in a lot of the songs, so those of us who play pianos can have a hell of a fun time trying to play along. Nightsongs didn't really have a specific vibe, but Heart does. Heart is all about what you've got right now. Heart's songs sing about being there while you meet someone, about feeling sad because they're gone, not about thinking what'll happen down the line or what has led up to this point. It's the final days of a relationship and both parties know it, but they're not fighting and they're not crying. It's sad but not heartwrenching, it's happy but not enough to have fixed what went wrong. It's just a really sweet album with some great cutesy songs that if you miss, you'll want to

"Set Yourself On Fire" is Stars' newest album. I'm the king of segue. Set Yourself On Fire is an amazing, amazing album that has zero downpoints. It's the days when a relationship has died. It's meeting an old lover and noticing their changes. It's not sweet, it's not bitter. It's not even bittersweet. It's the cutest soundtrack to memories ever. I listen to it daily, even when I should be getting more music. The band has completely pulled itself together and proven that they're not just a one or two album band. They're completely packed with songs that they want to do, and each one keeps getting better. Please, please, please listen to this. I beg of you.

I've really got to find a way to go see them live. They're just my kind of music and everyone I know who likes them is my kind of people. I can only imagine going to see one of their shows, most likely at the Troubadore, would be my kind of perfect night.


And hey, why not talk about a myspace band, huh? Hugboat is from what I can gather, just one Californian girl with a radical penchant for acapella and a love for the kinds of bands I love. Her music's majorly cute and has a supreme lo-fi sound that just screams "bedroom music." Get those naughty thoughts out of your head, I mean it's the kind of music you put on when you feel like spending a day in your room, windows open, sun shining in, doing whatevz yo. Definitely listen to all three of the tracks she has up, it won't take you very long and you'll be inspired to teach your cat to give you a high five. Or, in my case, to track down your housemate's kittens and make them high five each other. I, ah, need to go now. For... things.

A shortie. Go shortie.

A short post to prove my housemate that while passionate, I don't ALWAYS have to talk and type in essays. It's cool to be passionate about things, bitch. Also I may or may not be getting soused due to a shitty day. WHO KNOWS THESE THINGS.

Reel Big Fish went and released "Our Live Album Is Better Than Your Live Album" at the most inconvenient of times. The jerks. I've just come back from a fucking awesome music festival, have a maxed-out credit card, a disconnected mobile and $12 to last until I get paid next thanks to my asshole electricity company. Something about bills or whatever. Stupid capitalism. I have a rule with my favourite of favourite bands - I must never download, I must never pirate, I must always buy and slobber all over the album case so nobody wants to touch them. If you've borrowed a RBF album from me, I probably should have warned you.

Anyway. I can't wait until my next wad of cash so I can pick this up. It's a collection of live recordings, funnily enough, and it comes with a bonus DVD of recordings of live shows. Totally worth it if you're iffy on the Fish - they do a fantastic live set and this would be most definitely worth picking up. I'll rant and rave once it's on my stack, but until then, eat my anticipation.

I'll close with a complaint. Fuck temperatures. I'm in no mood for a shirt tonight and my back door is giving off a great reflection of myself, but I'm going to have to cover up soon. Which is a total loss to the human race. I look fine right now. This 5'6" motherfucker's going to go eat some ramen and get some pages from his latest script memorised now. I pwomise to gib ub a biiiig post tomowwow. Wuv yew aww.

Splendour In The Grass: an ode to my Converse All-Stars.

Oh my holy shit, I have just come back from one of the coolest music festivals I've been to. This year, we stayed in a house we rented out and had a friend running a stall so we had somewhere dry to retreat to at all times, which made the whole thing so much cooler.

God, where to begin?

My high-point acts were José González, Dungen, Scissor Sisters, Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set, The Grates (as always) and the super secret mystery guest: the fucking Vines. Holy dongtatoes was I not expecting them to come on the stage. The crowds were surprisingly good during the shows too; the only time I was really annoyed at the people was during The Grates when some louts at one end decided to bodycheck the crowd, causing one of those massive rippling surges that knocks people down. Normally I'm all for a bit of crowd violence but I was looking after a friend's backpack as she was quite tired and was having a really hard time, so it wasn't very cool. A major shout-out goes to my security guard homie at Clare Bowditch. Thanks, guy, for not letting me back in then getting angry at my friends because I couldn't come reclaim the seat they were reserving. I appreciate it. Where were you that night when we needed a facist to control the bus lines?

Anyway. The Vines. I was NOT expecting that, as I heard they weren't going to be doing any more major live shows for quite a few years on account of Craig Nicholls' Aspergers syndrome. Splendour is one of the most major shows in Australia, so it was quite amazing to see them. Goddamn they put on a great live set, even when Craig ain't hurling lit cigarettes into the crowd and demolishing drum kits with his guitar. I had to laugh when they played Ms Jackson, as the crowd did nearly all the work singing while Craig had a well-earned cigarette. Bravo, old bean, bravo.

I have a small note to all the comedians that were doing sets in the "hippie" area - if your entire audience is hippies, maybe you shouldn't use "vegetarian" as a derogatory term and make fun of yoga instructors? This is just one of the many, many, many reasons people weren't laughing at any of you. Oh yeah, and enough with the emo jokes. They're old. Pick a different group to mock, like, oh, women. Or asians. Oh, wait, you already were. Splendour In The Grass committee, please stop hiring unfunny bigots to put on "comedy" sets. I'll do it for free entry. I promise to actually make people laugh too.

I made the total mistake of wearing my red canvas Chuck Taylors for the two days, as it was unbelievably muddy. There were people in gumboots complaining about their feet being wet. My cons have a magical ability to keep my feet dry and clean and mud-free despite their many holes and I didn't want to wear out their mystical charm on this weekend. They did a good job though, so it'll be sad to see them soon going into retirement. Chuckys, I'll miss you.

And of course, because I'm so freakin' cool I had tickets to go to the official Splendour afterparty with all the bands. Well, a friend had tickets but she didn't want them so we got them. I of course didn't want to sell out and be seen in a room with people so popular and anti-scene because I have such a massive image to uphold that I too passed them on. It totally wasn't that I was ridiculously tired from rocking out and didn't want to be the dude standing in the corner that You Am I sit around and say "Who the hell is that creepy guy sleeping in the corner?" because I'm not that kind of guy. I swear.


Anyway on a much smaller note, go listen to Pilate that the friend who drove me home introduced me to. They're a fantastic Canadian band with a less than fantastic name (they had to change to Pilot Speed which is way less fitting in my opinion) and they're worth your time. Trust me, I know all about things being worth time. I guess you could go find them on detestable myspace if you so wish. If.

"That Guy" is just some guy. This guy. Me.

"Hey, wait, you're going to see the Unicannorns in a Unicannorns shirt? Jesus take that off, you don't want to be that guy."

Ugh. I'm sure you've met the kind of person who says that. Or maybe you ARE that kind of person. I hope to hell not, because if so, you despise me. It's considered the oldest rule in the book of going to concerts and really, that rule fucking sucks. Who started it? Some jerk. Who supports it? Jerks. Who are you? Probably some jerk.

Don't get me wrong, if the shirt's ugly as fuck don't wear it. That's on a purely fashion-conscious level though, I like to see people dress well enough to not look moronic. But to specifically choose your t-shirt? You're going to go see a band because you enjoy a band. There's a really good chance you enjoy them well enough to spend a decent sum of cash on them. In some circumstances (like me and Reel Big Fish) they represent a decent portion of your life. Why wouldn't you want to wear their shirt? To impress some judgemental fucks who believe music is about fashion, and that you go to shows primarily to show off to other fans how cool you are? That doesn't seem like the kind of person I'd want to impress, but hey. Who am I, right? Just some schmuck on the internet, yeah? You're reading me.

As for the people who yell about not wearing the shirts you buy at the show, I can't tell them to shut up enough. You know how touring bands make their money? They make it through tours. Selling fifty CDs at the merch table makes them more money than one hundred and fifty CDs through stores, or two or three hundred copies of their album on iTunes. Buying a band's shirt is a great way to support a band you love as well as net some cool new swag, and if you're like me you need to get to a merch table before the show starts to get your size.

But what to do with this shirt? I once twisted it into my belt, but I love mosh pits. I love the energy in them. That shirt got yanked and I was down a chunk of my wallet. I have tried going to a show shirtless planning on buying a shirt when I get in there, but I wasn't allowed in the door shirtless. Let me tell you - throwing out a shirt every time you get to a concert so you can wear your new shirt and hit the pits gets real expensive, real quick. I'm one of those guys you'll see wearing his new band shirt over the top of his other shirt at a show. I've had people actually come up to me and tell me I look like a moron for that.

Who the hell goes to a concert to hand out unwanted fashion advice? One guy once told me there was no way I was going to pick up at the show with an arrogant smirk, like I was going touse my Lagwagon ticket as a pickup line. Is this actually something people do? If I've got enough energy left after a concert to do some fuckin', that wasn't a very good concert. And the shows I go to that moshing, jumping around and resembling an idiot are very innapropriate practices are also the kind of shows that most of the crowd isn't interested in a 5'6" energetic guy with ska sideburns. So I didn't have a chance there anyway.

Augh. I hate these stupid rules about concerts and they need to die.


In a second of semi-frequent eye openers, I trolled myspace and came across the myspace of a Canadian band I have been a wee bit obsessed with as of late. They're called Five O'Clock Charlie and really, they're too cute for words. They do awesome folkish acoustic pop songs that just rub me in the right way. They're the kind of music you could play in a car with your grandparents and sing along. That's meant to be a good thing but the more I re-read that sentence the more I see negative connotations - ignore them. They're a fantastic band and if you're not singing Metaphors, Mythology within hours then you may have some kind of problem. Go on. Give them a shot. Taste their deliciously subtle seasoning. You'll be glad you did.

Five easy pieces

1) Stars are now one of my favourite bands. They're a Canadian indie pop group that fans of Architecture in Helsinki, Broken Social Scene, The Mountain Goats or Frente! would absolutely love. Their third album, Set Yourself On Fire, is the only one I've found but every song on it is awesome. The track One More Night, in particular, has some of the most relatable lyrics I've heard in anything. We've all done the frantic breakup sex before. I'm sure.

2) Speaking of Frente!, I really have this strong conviction that if they'd come out nowadays instead of the early-mid 90s, they would be unbelievably popular. They've got that cutesy indie rock sound that was the "new hotness" about 3 months ago and still has a strong following. They're just so fantastic. Their song Cuscatlan actually inspired me to get better at the guitar. Angie Hart, their singer, joined up with Dean Manning of Leonardo's Bride and Naomi Radom of Coda to start the band Holidays On Ice who I have been listening to quite a bit lately. More of that cutesy indie pop. It's always a good thing.

3) I just came back from a screening of the Beastie Boys film "Awesome, I Fuckin' Shot That." It's basically just a recording of one of their concerts at Madison Square Garden, where they selected fifty people and handed them Hi-8 cameras to film the goings on. It was a novel idea but really, it wasn't anything more than an official bootleg of one of their shows. For Beastie fans like me, that was all I wanted and it delivered. There's not much more to the film than that though, other than a brief "why I made it" talk with MCA who directed the whole thing. For those wanting a spoiler of the ending: basically, "'cause it would look fuckin' cool."

4) Where's ska going to go with fourth wave? Third wave has been dying down for a while so those two tone beats are likely to be leaving pop-punk behind and fusing themselves to one of the current popular trends in music. It's most likely fusing with hiphop or hardcore music, as both genres both easily lend themselves to the basic principles behind ska. If it goes hardcore, I'll put that Streetlight Manifesto have been paving the way for "heavier" ska but The Flaming Tsunamis are the first band I've really heard that actually does hardcore ska, or "skacore" as I've heard them nicknamed. If it goes hiphop, I'd love to get some names. My father, the music lover he is, found someone that he called me the other day about but I completely forgot to grab a pen. Whoops.

5) I was going to write about the Splendour In The Grass festival taking place in a scant few days, but then I came across the video for Knights of Cydonia from Muse's new album, Black Holes and Revelations. I really do think this is the greatest video that has ever been made. How can I put this, outside of the robots and ninja cowboys? I really can't get down how amazing it is in words. Have a screen grab.

Wow.
Also check it out on youtube if you MUST

Magyar Posse and Myspace

I'm being lazy for the first half here and crossposting my thoughts on Magyar Posse, aka the best post rock band in the universe, straight from my last.fm. No bitching, it's 11pm, I just came back from rehearsing a play and I'm doing a small new bit after this:

Magyar Posse are just... just wow. They're a Finnish post-rock group that just put Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky to utter shame. They do the most amazingly dramatic instrumental music that I like to think of as the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic Russian vampire movie. Even though they're Finnish. There's just a real Russian air to their songs. They have an incredible bleak theme to their music that I can't think of anything that comes close to matching.

Their albums are amazing. Their debut, We Will Carry You Over the Mountains was a fantastic entry but by no means was it their creative orgasm, so to speak. They were really just stretching their vampiric legs and seeing where they could go and what they could do. The individual tracks are fantastic if a little less complex than their later stuff, but the album lacks that certain cohesion their second album, Kings of Time achieved. Which is a bit of an unfair comparison as I don't think anything is quite as amazing as that album.

Kings of Time is a massive epic that they didn't name any tracks because seriously, the whole thing is one audio movie. Just a warning, this is gunna get a bit long because I can't get over how... how many times have I used the word amazing? It doesn't matter. I can't get over how amazing it is. It starts up with an introductory track surveying the state of the world and how it has come to be. It pans over broken cities and destroyed countrysides before heading into track two, an army walking over a snowfield. They know they're off to their death and they welcome it just for a chance at battle. The song does purely that, it takes them out, introduces us to the soldiers as they talk around campfires and brutally kills them in a fight against werewolves, vampires and ghosts. The army is then resurrected to serve the hordes of the undead. And much like The Protomen, they do potentially cheesy subjects and make you take them seriously, only Magyar do it without uttering a single word. Tracks three through five introduce us to the town the army came from, the families there and the people, only to have the army come back into town and brutally slaughter most everyone. One guy, one of the town's best fighters, survives and track 5 is him lamenting and mourning his dead lover, coupled with flashbacks to their lives together. Track 6 has him get up and leave the town, heading for the supernatural capital to kill them all or die trying. Track 7 really takes Magyar's bleak theme and just kills this hero that we've been musically following, taking his efforts and showing us how little they really matter.

Earlier this year, Magyar released Random Avenger which I just can't look at in the same vein as the amazing Kings of Time. Every single track on it is superior to anything they've done individually, but the album has the same lack of cohesion that We Will Carry You Over The Mountains shares. There's no overall flow, it's just a disc of amazing pieces of music. In my own opinion, the song European Lover/Random Avenger for which the album's named after is far and wide the best post-rock track I've ever heard. Imagine New Reno in the game Fallout 2, covered in snow. This track's a battle between a post-apocalyptic Montague and a bloodthirsty Capulet pair of families, only their Romeo and Juliets have conceded that they must kill each other for their families. The fight takes several days and they're both more accustomed to fighting at night. The days are for the citizens to recuperate and find what has been lost. Again, this is too bleak for a "good" ending. What we get is an amazing ending.

Total amazing count? Eight. Nine if you count this one.


On a smaller note, I decided to sell out to become everything I hate and I started a myspace in the hopes of getting a few more readers. I realised I don't really know how to "use" myspace so I was surprised to have my second friend request be from a random band. I accepted, planning on panning them to feel good about myself, but shock horror after listening I kinda like them. Their name is Flatlined and their myspace says they're "Rock / Post Hardcore / Acoustic" but really, I'd just avoid the labels and recommend them to those like me who have a guilty pleasure for Taking Back Sunday and Stabbing Westward. They're about halfway between the two. Check them out.

Under Byen made me a folk hero, or, how I have come to love my favourite bands

A bunch of bands? Could it possibly be? I find how I "discover" how great a band is really depends on the mood, the location, everything like that. So here's just a quick smattering of some of my top bands and how they earned their place.

To start it off, I can't not talk Reel Big Fish. They're my all time favourite band. It was back in high school when I first heard them. 1999. I was hooked on the game Tony Hawks Pro Skater mostly for the song Superman by Goldfinger; until then I'd been a pretty big fan of pop punk and I've been playing trumpet since I can remember so when those chirpy third wave ska notes hit my ears I almost collapsed. Seriously. It was like, everything I liked at the time was rolled into one. I quickly got onto a now-altered-beyond-belief filesharing site (Audiogalaxy) being the pirating little rapscallion that I was then and searched for it. I queued up a bunch of Goldfinger then noticed the "Bands that sound like..." link. The first thing that popped up was Reel Big Fish, so I just started queueing up random files of theirs, one of which was the fateful "All I Want Is More." I went to sleep, woke up, saw most of my songs had finished and headed off to school where I got dumped by my first ever girlfriend. If you could call her that. We were together about a week. Anyway, angst worked in fantastic ways so I came home, hair all spiked up, scraggly sideburns in check, and listened to my new music. Something about the line "Someday, maybe she'll come back to me and I'll say, why don't you go fuck yourself?" really spoke to those teenage hormones. I started getting more Fish. I started listening more. I firmly cemented my heart in ska and to be honest, I don't think I'll ever look back. Aaron Barrett, I love you. Never change.

65daysofstatic are another favourite that I could not have been in a more perfect mood for listening. I'd just started smoking purely for the image and I was thinking about how totally awesome ghosts are. Don't deny. Ghosts are awesome. I searched another filesharing place for songs that had ghosts in the title right as a thunderstorm started. I started browsing bandnames. Xiu Xiu? I wasn't in the mood for what I thought at the time was jpop. Oh boy was I wrong, I actually really like them now but that's irrelevant! Cradle of Filth? I wasn't 14 any more. Air? Well, I already had The Virgin Suicides album. 65daysofstatic? Now there's an interesting band name. I got the track Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here and popped open my window before sticking a cancer stick in my mouth and lighting up. The music started to mingle with the smell of wet earth. The cigarette smoke was getting hammered to pieces by falling water. Lighting started crashing eerily on-beat and I stopped and started to hear. I let my ears go wide. I just sat, jaw agape, staring at a small waterfall forming on the side of the freeway onramp across the street from my house as the pattering of rain on my tin carport roof blended with the raindrops of piano coming from my speakers and I swear, I could have cried right then and there at how absolutely perfect everything fit together. Except of course, I'm a real man. I smoke log cabins and wrestle small armies while scorning emotions and who am I kidding, my eyes did get all misted up. I'm yet to find a bad song by 65daysofstatic and I have their discography now. All because of one storm.

I worked for a while with a guy I went to high school with who, unbeknownst to both of us, developed really similar music tastes to me. Of course, we only knew about each other's preferences from high school so he knew me as a ska freak and I thought of him as a prog rocker, so we never really talked. Imagine my surprise when I found out he loved DJ Shadow too, was a big fan of Del Tha Funky Homosapien and secretly didn't really like Pink Floyd very much. It was a joyous occasion, to be sure. He was driving me home from work one night and told me I had to listen to a band he just discovered called Under Byen and handed me a burned CD. I was having a real Bjork fixation at the time so I wasn't really in the mood for listening to anything other than her Homogenic album. I gave it a shot though, walking in the door, shivering at the cold and stuck it in my musicbox. Under Byen's Det Er Mig Der Holder Træerne Sammen isn't just a tongue twister. It's what Bjork was subconsciously trying to achieve with Homogenic. I honestly felt warmed up as each song went on. I had to spread the word, so I told every single person I know they had to hear Under Byen. I'd force them to hear it, if I had to. Everybody loved them and soon one entire social circle I roll in was hailing me as a king. I later got an ex girlfriend onto them, she had her entire workplace hooked for life. These things aren't the reason I love Under Byen, but damn if they don't make for great bragging rights and ego trips.

It's late, so I'll close this one off with a fourth band: The Herd. An Australian hiphop group that I first overheard while drunk at a party being played at the neighbour's house. They were trying to drown out our indie rock stereo in an attempt to piss us off but I was having none of that. I wormed my way up to the fence and started spasming rhythmically in what I assumed was dancing. They came out and I got to talking, but the events of that night fade out at that point. Cut to a year later and I was going for a drive with my father when he, the hiphop fan that he is, played their debut album to me. It brought back a whole mess of great memories and a sober listening made me realise how Australian they are. Not in a drunken slob manner, not in that deep-seated racist manner that saddens me about that place and not in a satirical wannabe American manner. They're just really fun. They tell stories, they have deeper songs and they do it all while not betraying our really cool accent. I can count the number of Aussie hiphop groups that do that on one hand with enough room to pick two noses to spare.

A longer update WOULD occur if I wasn't preparing to slump, sleep and scream at customers tomorrow morning. Goodnight.

Orochi are the best kabuki rock band you're not listening to right now

I used to go to a club in my hometown of Brisbane, Australia called the Indie Temple. It was a fun place, playing all kinda of local acts, but the crowds were generally just sit-in-chairs, smoke-and-drink-scotch types who didn't really care about doing anything but chilling with their friends and watching some people play. Which I had no problem with at all.

So I'm there one night and four Japanese guys in kimonos and kabuki facepaint get up onto the main stage. Naturally, my friends and I were interested, this was way more visually appealing than yet another curly haired dude in an olive jacket or another velvet-skirted pair of acoustic rock females. Or men that one time. Anyway, kabuki guys. Right.

We were sitting there eagerly anticipating what they'd do when the singer steps forwards and sings the Japanese national anthem into the microphone in a far deeper voice than I was expecting from a man of his appearance as the two guitarists unrolled a large "Rising Sun" flag and hung it from the stage speakers. The singer then yelled into the microphone "WE ARE OROCHI" and the music started.

It wouldn't have been more than a minute into their first song that they had two people jumping around in front of their stage. Two turned to ten, which turned into half the club in an insane impromptu moshpit. At their first ever show. At a sit-down club. It saddened me that I had a broken toe at the time, because they obviously had some incredible energy.

Anyway, I followed them, being a sort of local groupie, until their gigs stopped for a Christmas break. They didn't come back, which saddened me, although I got an email saying their first full length album had come out. It's fantastic, by the by, but it doesn't match up to seeing them live. With no Orochi shows on the horizon, I just put my love for them on a backburner and stopped checking up.

I found out a few nights ago they've moved interstate, now calling Melbourne, Australia their home. Melbournians, you lucky bastiches. I checked out their newly updated website and noticed something new and fantastic - they have a deal with iTunes so everybody can hear their stuff. Which is where you come in.

See, Orochi do an incredible kind of hard rock/metal that is fused with traditional japanese instruments. They call themselves "samurai kabuki rock" which I quite like; they have freakin' swordfights on-stage sometimes. They are a must-hear for anybody who likes music that rocks your socks off.

So go buy their tracks. Or at least, spend a few hours at their myspace wishing you had the whole album. Because they're fantastic.

Myspace: www.myspace.com/orochijyo
Website: www.orochijyo.cjb.net